


(they won't)

by jonphaedrus



Series: let's go to bed before you say how you feel [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Belligerent Sexual Tension, Dirty Talk, Established Relationship, Hair-pulling, Light BDSM, M/M, Powerbottom, Sharing a Bed, Sickfic, Size Kink, Slap Slap Kiss, Snark, aka: the fic where i do literally anything to avoid "ilm" in describing a penis, headcanons headcanons everywhere, two grown men do literally anything rather than talk about their feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 21:30:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7547866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He felt something in his chest, a stopper at the back of his throat, and when Nero’s smiled softened, eyes crinkling, Cid had to bite back something painful that threatened to work its way into his mouth, and he shook his head when Nero opened his mouth.</p><p>“Don’t,” he found himself whispering. “Please don’t.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	(they won't)

**Author's Note:**

> :^^^)

It was pouring in Mor Dhona, a weather cell that had tumbled over them from Coerthas, and Cid scowled as he looked up into the sky from underneath his waterproof cloak, wishing he’d brought something more than just a cowl to keep the rain off. He hadn’t thought of it, since it rarely rained in Mor Dhona—more often than not, they were stuck with the thick miasma of aether in the air, pouring out of Silvertear Falls.

As he walked up the path to the front of the Ironworks, splashing water left and right from puddles between the cobblestones, the moon peeked out from behind the thick cloud cover to illuminate the front steps of the Ironworks, which before had been lost in shadow.

There was someone sitting there.

They were hunched over, arms wrapped around their knees, face hidden. For a moment, in the half-light of the moon, Cid couldn’t make out more than just the vague shape, and then he noticed the dirt- and mud-streaked brown coat, the short blond hair plastered flat with water. “Nero?” He said, surprised, and after a moment the other man looked up at him, eyes hidden behind a mask that he fumbled off after a moment, hand shaking with cold. 

“There you are,” Nero said at last, his voice hoarse. “I was wondering where you were.”

“I was at the Find,” Cid replied, and then walked closer after a moment, peering down at the other man. Next to Nero was a heavy canvas bag, also sopping wet. “You know you could have gone inside—the Ironworks is always open.” Someone was almost always there, so they kept the door unlocked, although it was usually guarded. Nero gave a pained laugh and struggled to his feet. He swayed alarmingly, and steadied himself against the edge of the building—Cid had to stop himself from reaching out to set a hand on the other man’s arm. 

“I doubt anyone in there would be pleased to see me.” Nero said at last, and stooped to grab the bag, holding onto it tight, coughing. “I need a favour.” He looked pained to ask it, upper lip wrinkled. “As much as asking you _galls_ , I’m at my wit’s end.”

“Come inside,” Cid replied, finally setting his hand on the other man’s arm. “You’re soaked to the bone.” It said something that Nero didn’t attempt to struggle or complain, just let Cid drag him in through the door. 

The workshop was blessedly empty—as much due to the bad weather as Cid’s luck, most likely—and Cid pulled Nero over to his workbench, and then stopped to shed his dripping cowl, hanging it up on a peg to puddle on the floor. Cid ran a hand through his hair, wiping off what water had soaked through, and turned to Nero, who had leaned one hip against the edge of his workbench. He looked tired, cold, and wet, with water dripping down his cheekbones from his hairline down into his stubble. “What do you need?”

“My armour,” Nero replied, and after a moment, hefted the bag up onto the table with a great deal more struggle than Cid expected, the motion leaving him out of breath, panting. “It’s been deteriorating...ever since the World of Darkness.” He rubbed the back of one hand over his forehead, wet bangs dripping into his eyes. He was so soaked that it only made the water on his face worse. “You may have more luck with it than me, or at least, the tools I need to fix it.”

Cid wasn’t sure he would ever trust Nero further than he could throw him, but still, Nero asking him for a favour was a lot—it wasn’t so long ago that they would have been at one-another’s throats instead of just having a conversation. “Let me take a look,” Cid said at last, and opened the bag to pull out the first thing on top—one of the shoulder pieces, which he turned back and forth in his hands. For one thing, the armour was just badly dented and dinged: no doubt a souvenir of the time Nero spent fighting for Unei and Doga’s lives. “What’s the issue?”

“It’s...soft,” Nero said, swaying as he picking a small hammer off of the wall above Cid’s head, handing it to him. When their fingers brushed, Nero’s skin was cold and clammy. He leaned over, and this close, Cid could feel how hot he was, Nero’s chest almost pressed flat against his back. Taking the hammer, Cid tapped on the metal and made a surprised noise when instead of just ringing, there was a very small scrape that formed on the edge where he’d dinged it. “I have no idea what’s wrong with it.” 

If _Nero_ was saying that, it was not a good sign.

“It must be something to do with the way it crystallised,” Cid mused, turning the piece around and tapping a few more times, playing with the pressure he exerted to see how much the armour would dent. “It probably changed the underlying alloy of the metal, although it shouldn’t be _too_ hard to re-forge, if it comes down to that.” They had the tools to, certainly—they’d just need a set of moulds. It certainly wouldn’t be the hardest thing Cid had ever done.

He glanced up at Nero, who was close enough that they almost banged their heads together. “Do you have the schematics to make a new set of moulds?”

“Yes,” Nero swayed again, and Cid narrowed his eyes, pursed his lips. “In the bag.” There was something _off_ about the other man, and Nero confirmed his suspicions by coughing again: a deep, wet hacking into the sleeve of his coat. Cid slowly set the hammer down. He squinted at Nero, who blinked back at him. There was a flush high on his cheekbones, and now that he wasn’t actively being rained on Cid could see how clammy and pale his skin was.

“Nero,” Cid said, quietly. Nero blinked at him. “How long were you out there?” Nero shrugged a shoulder in a non-answer, and Cid reached up, pressed the back of his hand against the other man’s forehead, even as Nero tried to jerk back away from the touch. His skin was burning, and not in the they-hadn’t-seen-each-other-in-months kind of warm. A _fever_ kind of warm.

“What, Garlond?” Nero sneered at him, pushing his hand away, but his grip was worryingly weak. “I don’t need you to mother me.”

“Right,” Cid said, and then pushed his workbench abruptly to the side, taking away Nero’s support. Much like knocking the struts out from under a building, Nero swayed, arm outstretched, and with a surprised yelp overbalanced and almost fell over, Cid catching him before he crashed sideways into the wall. “Because you’re the absolute _portrait_ of health. You could take the Warrior of Light on right now and be no worse for wear.”

“Let go of me, Garlond,” Nero snarled, trying to shove Cid’s arm off. “Sarcasm is unbecoming on your pretty face.” Cid sighed—fed up and angry and long-suffering all at once— and wrapped an arm around the other man’s chest. 

“You’re an idiot,” Cid said, dragging Nero with him out of the workshop to copious protestations. “Whoever thought that sitting in the cold rain wouldn’t end in you sick?”

“Let _go_ ,” Nero whined, a hint of the petulant child he was sneaking into his voice, but Cid ignored him, towed the other man into the back halls of the Ironworks. When they got to his room, he pushed the door open and dragged Nero in after him. Cid shut the door behind them both before he grabbed the other man’s scarf and pulled it over his head, tugged his coat off after it, letting both pieces of cloth fall to the floorboards with a wet, heavy _slap_. Their clothes had already left a trail of water, Nero’s far more puddles than drops, so just dumping their clothes on the ground honestly would not make that much worse of a mess than he would already have to clean up. “What are you doing?” Nero stumbled back, almost tripping. He was out of breath, and Cid could see how clearly the flush was climbing his face now—any of his usual bravado had been sapped out of him by the fever.

“Getting you out of those wet clothes.”

“In your _room?_ ” Cid gave him a look that said _where else_? Nero’s flush intensified, going from a fever to embarrassment, and Cid sighed in exasperation and stripped the other man brusquely out of the rest of his clothes until Nero was in only his drawers. He did the same for himself, because it would be pointless to try and take care of Nero while he himself was sick. Then, while the other man was (for once) not bitching and moaning for every second of his life, Cid grabbed a robe and bundled Nero into it, letting him stew while he dug up his sleep clothes and changed. Nero’s shocked, nonplussed silence lasted through the whole affair, but his disgusted, unhappy expression spoke to much the same way Cid was feeling in general, until he shoved Nero onto the edge of his bed and got a towel to roughly dry his hair, forcing water out of the short strands, until the blond curls were hanging limp and damp over his forehead, rather messier than Nero ever kept them.

“This is unnecessary, Garlond.” Nero snarled, although he coughed halfway through saying it, a wet hack, and Cid grit his teeth and ignored him. “You’re treating me like a child.”

“Well, I’ve yet to see any evidence that you _aren’t_ a child. Hold still.” Nero hung his head, and Cid finished towelling his hair dry, then checked his fever with the back of his hand. It hadn’t gone up, but it hadn’t gone down either, and Nero was shaking slightly, his teeth grit, not looking Cid in the eye. Chills, then.

“I’m fine, Garlond. Really.” He lifted a hand, fingers wrapping around Cid’s wrist, and there was a gentleness there that made Cid relax slightly. The worst part about worrying about Nero was he always actually _did_ worry—the man was his personal burden to bear, but it was his burden and his alone.

“Shut up, Nero.” Cid said at last, gently, and pushed him further on the bed, Nero struggling slightly before he gave in and flopped onto his back on the mattress, coughing. It took a good bit of scuffling before Cid managed to shove Nero under his covers, the other man looking about as pitiful as a wet, hungry coeurl kitten by the end of it, flush moving from his cheeks to his forehead. He was shaking all over, and he coughed wetly again before he sneezed, eyes running.

He looked absolutely miserable.

“Hold still,” Cid snapped, and shoved the other man flat onto the pillows, Nero moaning in pain as Cid pressed his ear flat to his chest, because Nero looked like given the opportunity he was going to bolt. “Breathe deeply.”

“Why—“ Nero tried to say, and coughed. Now that Cid could hear his chest, he listened carefully and heard a soft, wet rattle in the other man’s lungs, confirming the suspicion that he’d been harbouring since he’d realised Nero had spent probably upwards of a few hours curled up wet and miserable in a thunderstorm. _Definitely_ pneumonia.

“Because you have pneumonia.” Sitting up, Cid looked at Nero, who blinked balefully at him before flopping down onto the pillows, coughing again, arms akimbo and face resigned to his fate. He’d clearly been pushing himself earlier, and it was catching up with him. Rapidly. “Stay there; I’m going to get you something to eat.”

“This is humiliating,” Nero whimpered, and Cid just pushed him back into the pillows, although he gentled the touch by running his fingers through Nero’s still-damp hair.

“For both of us, trust me.”

 

 

Nero slept crammed into the side of Cid’s bed for four solid days, waking only briefly to stumble to the loo, eat, or drink—aside from his constant, half-murmured complaints. After four full days of making sure Nero of the Fourteenth didn’t die in his bed, Cid was taking out his ill-temper on the other man’s armour, neck-deep in reforging it when Nero stumbled into the workshop at his first fully-conscious, ambulatory opportunity, wearing one of Cid’s sleep shirts half-unbuttoned down his chest. It was two sizes too small for him in length and two too large in width, so it looked ridiculous on him, and bared a good bit of his thighs.

“What is _he_ doing here?” Wedge gasped, half standing where he was perched on a stool on the other side of the workshop, but Cid ignored the Lalafell and turned his ill-tempered glower at Nero, who was the source of his bad humour. His skin was sagging and his eyes had bags under them, but he sneered angrily at Cid. He _had_ regained his colour, and actually looked coherent, which was a drastic change from a few days before.

“You don’t have to treat me like an invalid, too ill to stand.” They were the first coherent words Nero had spoken to him since he’d passed out that first night, and true to his character, Cid wanted to crack him over the skull for saying it.

Cid stared Nero dead in the eye, and slammed his hammer into the piece of armour he’d just finished cooling and was smoothing, about four times harder than he needed it to. The resulting clang was loud enough that it made Nero wince in pain and jump several ilms in the air, stumbling afterward and holding onto the doorframe for support. 

“Right,” Cid replied, face not moving an inch. “Because your balance is perfect, and you can stand without any difficulty.”

 Nero made an obscene gesture and stumbled back out of the workshop.

 

 

The following days went something much like that. Every day Nero was out of bed more, scuffling about the Ironworks like a particularly annoying underfoot pest, “helping” Cid fix his armour. The worst part about it was Nero was actually an extremely talented engineer, as much as it was rather ruined by his terrible personality, so they made better time together than Cid had alone, even if half his work-time was spent knocking Nero’s hands away from things like he was a misbehaving child who wanted the last cookie. By the end of the week, about half of the suit of armour was reassembled, and Cid and Nero had spent half a day going ten rounds on how to best fix the breastplate, mostly because Nero kept so much damn Magitek in it. Occasionally, a hushed silence would fill the air between them, and every time Cid had to leave before he said something foolish to Nero’s ridiculous doe-eyed expression, and would leave the room in a fit of pique just to be productive, with the end result that by the end of the week, they had a finished set of moulds and blueprints and were preparing to pour the metal for the armour.

 

 

That last night it was awkward in Cid’s too-small bed, the two of them crammed up back to back. “Why are you even letting me share a bed with you,” Nero murmured, his hoarse voice soft, muffled by the pillow. “It’s not big enough.” It wasn’t, actually—Nero was absurdly tall, and Cid hadn’t exactly calculated the other man’s dhalmel-legs into his sleeping arrangements when he had set them up in the first place. 

“Because there isn’t a guest room,” Cid snapped back, and they fell into the awkward silence again. It had hung between them now for days, when both of them had been unwilling to admit what they were thinking; as per usual. There was a rustle and then Cid glanced over his shoulder as Nero turned to face him, one arm slung around his waist, nose pressed into the fluffy hair at the back of his neck. Nero breathed out a sigh, and his arms tightened around Cid’s waist, and Cid closed his eyes. If it hadn’t been dark, they hadn’t been alone, Nero would have still been as prickly as a cactus. Now, though, he was tucked up tight against Cid’s back and he felt a ridiculous, annoying burst of affection for the other man. Years went by, and they always ended up right back where they started—here, overemotional but underfulfilled, and totally incapable of saying what they actually wanted. As always.

“You could stay, you know,” Cid murmured, relaxing into his hold, head rolling back to bump into Nero’s shoulder.

“Would you really want me to?” There was a genuine note of curiosity in Nero’s voice, and for once, Cid sighed. Told the truth.

It couldn’t hurt them any more than they had already hurt themselves.

“Yes.”

As much as he almost hated to admit it, having Nero around was...nice. He was helpful in the workshop, and good company. He reminded Cid of some of the better parts of his life, in Garlemald, before everything had gone to shit. Whenever Nero vanished off the face of the planet for months at a time, it left Cid worrying that maybe _this_ time he’d gone and gotten himself killed in whatever dumb idiot thing he’d thought was a good idea _that_ day. To have Nero somewhere he could keep an eye on him left him feeling far more relaxed.

So, it was nice, that he didn’t have to spend his time worrying about whether or not someone was going to come to Mor Dhona bragging that they had the same strength as the Warrior of Light because they’d finally done Nero tol Scaeva in, permanently.

 

 

By the end of the second week, Nero was almost entirely recovered, and they had cast and forged a new set of armour, and now worked side-by-side to smooth the pieces down to fit back together, hanging them on a mannequin when they were finished. The old suit had been melted down for scrap, and Nero spent most of his time forcing wiring into the new set, his lower lip bitten raw from his focus and little scrapes on his fingers from where he kept catching himself on the wiring—two remarkably endearing features that Cid was trying to do his best to not concentrate on. 

At night, they slept tangled together, and Cid slept better than he almost ever did. He’d forgotten how it was to share a bed with Nero, who wanted the most physical contact possible, who would snuffle and whimper and moan if Cid rolled away. Biggs and Wedge looked at him askance, narrowed-eyed, but neither one of them questioned or pushed too hard on Cid sharing a bed with Nero. Wedge and Biggs knew what their history was, knew that years before when they’d been in school together and still could hold a conversation without going for the throat, they’d shared a bed every night and done a lot more than just sleep.

“That’s the last of it,” Cid said, one afternoon as the sunlight poured in the windows, dusting metal filings off of his fingers. The armour had all been hung up into the approximate shape it would be, all the metal finished casting and buffing. Nero prowled around it warily, poking and prodding here and there, although he didn’t manage to find any real faults in his search for imagined defects. “Just needs paint and to be attached back to the padding.

“It’s close enough,” Nero begrudgingly admitted, frowning, arms crossed. “I wish we’d been able to save the old pieces.”

“We did what we could,” Cid replied, wrapping up the plans for the armour casting. “We’ll paint it tomorrow.” Nero nodded, and they went to eat dinner, and afterward returned to Cid’s room. 

Nero had been wearing a mix of his own clothes and Cid’s ill-fitting ones, since they’d barely left the Ironworks as they’d been so focused on working, and he stripped his shirt off and dumped it on the laundry pile before he flopped facedown onto the mattress, closing his eyes and sighing. Cid, halfway through going to take a shower to get the last of the forge-sweat off of the back of his neck, looked over at Nero.

“Nero,” he began. Nero didn’t move. “Are you leaving, when this is done?” Nero still didn’t move, or say anything.

It was enough of an answer.

Cid came over and pressed a hand to the base of the other man’s back, and Nero opened his eyes, watched him from under the fall of his fringe where his face was pressed into the mattress. Neither of them moved, as Cid traced the top of Nero’s waistline down to the first curve of his arse.

“I can’t stay,” Nero said, at last, not moving as Cid touched him, just watching, waiting. 

“What are you looking for?” Cid whispered, and Nero shrugged minutely, still not moving otherwise, as Cid’s fingers dipped below his waistband, scraping over the very top of the crack of his arse, bumping against his hipbones. 

“I’ll know it when I find it.” They stared at each other, Nero breathing unevenly, Cid still trailing fingers over his skin.

“Shower with me.” It wasn’t a question, and Nero nodded, stumbling upright. For a moment, they stared at each other, and then Cid put himself on the chopping block, took a half-step forward, coming back to the end of all of their equations, the eventual outcome of all their dances. Wedge and Biggs, knowing them, had probably thought that for all the time Nero had been crammed into his bed they’d been making up for months apart.

It was never that easy. _Nothing_ with Nero was ever that easy.

Nero tangled his hands into Cid’s hair, stepped closer, sliding into Cid’s hands on his hipbones, and they _finally_ met in the middle, Cid tilting up to meet Nero as he leaned down, Nero’s quiet helpless noise as their lips met swallowed up in the perilous rush of their breathing, the meeting of their lips. Nero leaned over him, hands sliding forward, palms brushing over Cid’s cheekbones, cupping his face. Nero pulled him closer, chasing the taste of Cid’s tongue, and he had to shift up to his tip-toes to meet the drag of the other man’s hands.

“You like the beard,” Cid said, half-laughing into the kiss, as Nero scraped fingertips through it, and Nero hummed quietly, pulled him back for another kiss, and then another, as Cid shrugged out of his shirt, Nero’s hands following the bare planes of his body once it was gone.

“It makes you look older,” Nero replied, kissing him again. “More blastedly-intelligent. Fills out your face.” It reminded him of how, after they’d stumbled out of the Crystal Tower, when Nero had still been caked in the crystallised darkness, with the loss of G’raha and Unei and Doga weighing on all their hearts, Cid had pushed Nero down to his bedroll. It had been a night of triumph and sadness outside of the tent, but between the two of them it had been just stripping armour and checking for hurts aside from exhaustion, and then Cid pinning Nero’s hips to the ground and sucking his cock until he’d left beard burn on Nero’s thighs, and riding his cock until they were both sore and desperate and Nero had been at the verge of tears. 

That was the best way Cid had been able to think of to show his appreciation that Nero hadn’t gone and gotten himself killed. 

Together they managed to get across the room, hardly breaking apart, Cid relying on Nero’s arm around his waist to keep stable while he stayed perched on his toes to not stop kissing the other man, and he got the bathroom door open without turning. They stumbled into the shower stall still tangled, stripping their trousers onto the floor of the restroom, and Nero managed to get the curtain shut before Cid got the shower on.

This was different than their meeting, both of them dripping water in Revenant’s Toll under the cold Coerthan cloud cover. Now, the water was as hot as Cid’s whole body felt, because it had been months since he’d seen Nero, months since the other man had run off rather than deal with the fallout from Crystal Tower. When Nero backed him up against the wall, Cid let the other man pick him up, showing that he really had recovered from the worst of it, and wrapped his powerful thighs around Nero’s waist, curling his fingers and knotting them tightly into thick blond curls until Nero whimpered into his mouth, cock jumping against Cid’s leg. “You’re a disaster,” Cid said more fondly than he’d meant to, and Nero made a noise of disapproval, but didn’t disagree.

It made Cid laugh, and Nero smiled at him far more fondly than he wanted to give the other man credit for. Letting Nero’s hands under his arse hold him up, Cid leaned his head back against the tiled wall and just watched Nero’s face, the softness at the corners of his eyes and mouth like bruised over-ripe fruit. He felt something in his chest, a stopper at the back of his throat, and when Nero’s smiled softened, eyes crinkling, Cid had to bite back something painful that threatened to work its way into his mouth, and he shook his head when Nero opened his mouth.

“Don’t,” he found himself whispering. “Please don’t.”

Nero didn’t, just stopped, understanding. He more than anyone but Cid himself knew what a tangled, complex mess everything between them was, and better than to push his luck. They cleaned up in silence, sharing shampoo and soap, until they were both clean and tangled up again, Nero letting the wall hold Cid up as he rubbed his palms up and down the other man’s thighs, cupping his cock occasionally. Water was soaking his curls down onto his forehead, and a flush was on his cheeks, his hard cock bumping Cid’s arse.

“How long’s it been,” Nero’s voice was soft, all the fight and bluster gone out of him as he traced Cid’s entrance with a soap slick fingertip, cleaning him and opening him all at the same time until Cid was breathless.

“You know how long,” he found himself murmuring in reply, clenching down on Nero’s fingertip for a moment, pulling his hair back until Nero bared his teeth. “What, seven months since you ran away from the Find?”

“What, are you keeping yourself for me?” Cid didn’t feel the need to grace that with a response, so Nero ploughed on. “I’m sure Eorzea’s Garlean hero has admirers out the door, all just waiting for the opportunity to bend over for him.”

“I don’t need admirers,” Cid said quietly watching Nero’s blue eyes. “I’ve got you.”

Nero froze, stock-still, and his face crumpled like old paper. For one jarring moment, his hold on Cid’s hips wavered, and he finally closed his eyes, tucked his face into Cid’s neck, breath scalding. “Don’t say shit like that,” he managed, voice shaking, and Cid scraped his blunt nails over the back of the other man’s neck, against the grain of the short hairs there.

“It’s true.” Nero had been with Cid since they’d both been teenagers, before bad blood had soured everything between them for good. He’d had one other man in all that time, but they’d always ended up back here no matter what both of them did. Gently, he cupped Nero’s chin and pulled him back up to kiss again, and the anguish of that moment passed and turned back into heat, until the water began to run cool.

They dried off and moved back out of the restroom without parting for more than seconds, and this time Cid pushed Nero back, one hand splayed on his chest, his other one palming Nero’s cock where it was bumping against his stomach, until the other man caught the back of his knees against the mattress and toppled backwards, collapsing into the blankets and pillows. Nero leaned up on his elbows and looked at Cid as he shoved him further onto the bed, and climbed on after him, straddling his hips and letting Nero’s hard, blood-reddened cock bump against the small of his back as he reached to get lube out of his bedside table. They’d managed to find blessed silence, and neither of them said anything until Cid was gasping and fucking himself with three fingers, Nero’s hands white-knuckled on the sheets as Cid ground back against his cock, let it leave precum-sticky trails against the crack of his arse.

“Fuck,” Nero finally managed, voice cracking as Cid shook and moaned and got four fingers inside himself, chin pressed to his chest. It had been so long since he’d taken his time like this, that he wasn’t going to be unprepared for getting his arse fucked inside out on Nero’s cock. “Please, Cid, come on—“

“I’m not getting that in me without effort,” Cid snapped back, moaning under his breath as he curled his fingers to push just shy of his prostate. The last time, at the Find, he’d grit his teeth and bore the pain of their first, rushed time together in almost a decade just because adrenaline had been in both of them and he’d almost lost Nero (again). Now, he was going to enjoy the full length and power of Nero’s gorgeous, blood-hard cock.

“Cid, I’m _dying_ ,” Nero whined, and Cid groaned, rolled his eyes, got his fingers out.

“You’re _not_.” He was so overdramatic, but Cid acquiesced anyway. Between all the lube from his fingers and Nero’s own dripping precum they were both slick enough, and he rose up on his haunches, the powerful muscles in his thighs tensing as he got his balance against the mattress, one hand pressed to the base of Nero’s stomach and the other reaching back to wrap around the head of his cock. Nero whimpered, and moaned as Cid twisted, glad for Nero’s fingers warm and keeping him steady, gripping his thighs.

The first, slow sink down onto the head of other man’s cock left Cid with a wet noise bottled up at the back of his throat. He closed his eyes, let out a long, slow breath. Nero kept trying to roll his hips, whimper, moan, but Cid’s hand on the base of his stomach kept him still as Cid took his damn sweet time taking his cock. It was as long as a better portion of his forearm, and in one place was as thick as Nero’s damn wrist. Cid had remembered, almost twenty years before, how he’d been terrified of the damned thing—now, he frankly relished the challenge.

It took what felt like a year of his life to get down, and by the time Cid was sunk to the base he was trembling all over and panting, his head hung limp on his neck and his breath shallow. “Gods,” he finally whispered, clenching around Nero. He never quite forgot how good it felt—how absolutely utterly Nero had ruined him for anybody else. Nero was watching him with heavy-lidded eyes and his lips parted, a splotchy flush painting his cheeks and forehead, and he kept rolling his hips up and thrusting deep into Cid, so deep he felt speared-open and ruined.

They found a ragged, incoherent pace, Nero leaning up on one elbow so they could meet in the middle to kiss, Cid’s fingers making a tangled ruin of the other man’s hair, his cock bumping untouched against Nero’s stomach. Rather than jerk him off, Nero just kept fingering the burning-tight ache of Cid’s rim just like he loved it, Nero feeling from the outside how brutally his cock was tearing Cid apart. “You fucking love it, don’t you,” Nero murmured, his voice cracking when Cid twisted his hips just right, hissing between his teeth as his prostate got unavoidably ground into by the thick, mushroom head of the other man’s cock. “How big I am.”

“That’s not a question,” Cid replied, knotting his fingers tighter in Nero’s hair and dragging his head back until the other man’s throat was stretched tight, his blue eyes wild and frantic and tear-damp, and then tugged harder for good measure, just to hear Nero sob. Nothing between them had ever been gentle, nothing between them would ever _be_ gentle. Their relationship was made up of unresolved sexual tension and problems neither of them would ever talk about, and Cid always won in the end like this, riding Nero’s cock to take his own pleasure until the other man was a blubbering, flushed mess with tear streaks on his face and nailmarks dug into his chest.

“I love you,” Nero cried, hiccoughing, sobbing as Cid moaned and shifted his hips to get the best line of star-bright fire against his prostate, Nero’s hard cock filling him so full his throat almost ached with it. “I love you, I love you—“ he always got like this, wrung-out and spent and worn like old sandpaper, right before he came, too fast and too soon as always.

“I know,” Cid murmured, the closest he could ever bring himself to admit just how flushed and warm and incoherent those words left him, knowing that Nero came back every time because they couldn’t live without each other, two frantically orbiting planets that came too close sometimes, too near to crashing. They _couldn’t_ stay together, couldn’t hold to gravity without utterly consuming one another in a singularity that would destroy them. They couldn’t exist apart, either: no, they were hopelessly fated to this, this endless cycle of destructive behaviour and bittersweet love. Cid found himself gentling his touch, wiping tears from Nero’s cheekbone with the pad of his thumb. “I know you do.”

Nero took that as his cue to come, less than five full minutes into fucking him, and Cid groaned as the other man spurted deep inside of him, running the back of one hand over his face, wiping away the strands of his hair that had gotten stuck to his forehead with sweat. His own cock _throbbed_ untouched, and Nero whimpered and moaned as Cid kept riding his cock, milking him through his orgasm, two fingers hooked into Nero’s mouth that he kept sucking on, obscene and wet and messy. After a moment of delirium, Nero shifted his hips up, thrusting his still-hard cock somehow deeper into him, and Cid’s throat closed on an almost-hysterical scream at the pressure of it, but then Nero was sliding one, and then two, fingertips inside him, stretching him further open, until his eyes were rolling back and all he could see was white stars.

Cid came barely-touched, fingers cupped around the head of his own cock, so tense he could feel the muscles in his thighs and feet cramping, and afterward, it took the both of them to get him off of Nero’s softening cock, to collapse into bed beside the other man.

They laughed, kissed. Tangled together, making a mess of Cid’s sheets, getting everything (and each other) sticky as they talked into one-another’s mouths, noses pressed together, Nero’s fingers tracing the shrapnel scars on Cid’s back and side from Carteneau, tracing the lines of his cheekbones under his beard and hair.

“I love you,” was the last thing he heard Nero say before he fell asleep, the other man’s face nestled in the curve of his neck, fingers splayed against his ribs, and the worst part was that Cid knew it was true, the truest thing Nero ever damn well said, but was so afraid of the inevitable crash that he couldn’t even bring himself to say _I love you too._

 

 

Cid awoke the following morning to an empty, cold bed. When he cleaned up, aching and sore, he found all of Nero’s things that had become scattered about his room were gone, the place meticulously cleaned up. In the workshop, when he emerged half-dressed and limping due to the ungodsly ache in his hips, the unpainted and unsanded suit of armour was gone, the mannequin carefully returned to the corner they’d taken it from.

On his worktable was a single sheet of paper, folded over once, He picked it up and unfolded it—it was a series of numbers, written in Nero’s meticulous hand. Beneath it, scrawled a little more haphazardly, like he’d thought of it at the last moment, was this addition: _my control panel passcode for backdoors in Castrum tech. Do not lose. Need it back_.

Cid stared, and then, unexpectedly, busted out into laughter, shaking his head. “Why,” he asked the empty workshop, redundantly.

He knew why. Nero would be back; here was his promise.

Damn man.

**Author's Note:**

> the alternate summary to this fic is "everyone is a commitmentphobe". title is from [the ultimate cidnero song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JHT-PIptfw)
> 
> tumblr and twitter: @jonphaedrus


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